Chickens

Considering how much I have NOT accomplished today, there is really no excuse for my being on here… except for my few faithful readers. You know who you are. (Hi Papaw!) So, I’ll have to make it short. I really do have a lot to do today, and that two hour unscheduled nap didn’t help. I honestly had no control over it, though. We sat down with our lunch to watch a video on ‘friction,’ and I was gone, as if someone had hit me over the head with a brick. Two hours later, well, I’m getting back to work.

We have a broody hen! This is the first truly broody hen we’ve had in all our chicken days, and that’s pretty exciting. To translate for you city folk, a broody hen is a chicken that wants to be a mama. She has decided to start sitting on her eggs, and those of anyone else that happen to be in her nest. She was sitting on a couple, so we politely put about 5 more under her, just to give her a little more to work for. It takes 21 days to brood chicks, so we still have a while to go.




Here she is, sitting contentedly, as she’s been doing for about four days. She only gets up to get water and food, for about 5 minutes at a time, then she settles back on her nest.



This is her flock-mate, who looks just like her. I wanted you to get the full effect if you’ve never seen a silkie before. They don’t have names right now, but I think Lucille and Ethel would be good. We actually name them every once in a while, but then we forget what they are, so we have to start all over again.



They are an odd breed. These are bantam chickens, too, so they are about 1/3 to ½ the size of a regular chicken. These two ‘Blue Silkies’ are adorable little things, with all their pomp and poof. Their ‘blue’ coloring, which is really more of a gray, is beautiful. It must be hard to carry around all that frizzie hair!



Here is our banty rooster that stays in the back yard. Most of the chickens are out at the barn, but this little guy has his own small harem here by the house. He’s really quite hilarious. Whenever you go into the yard, he usually makes sure to flaunt his masculinity by pinning a hen and having his way with her. Then, as soon as you turn your back, he chases you. If you turn around and make eye contact, he starts pecking the ground like he didn’t even notice you were there. Occasionally, he’ll ruffle up his neck feathers and present a challenge, so I’ve had to spank him with a stick before. He’s pretty bold, though. As soon as you leave the yard, or even stop looking out the window, he crows several times to let you know he’s boss, and you had better think twice before coming back into his territory. Also currently unnamed, he is a Mille d'Fleur bantam.



This is ‘Lucky.’ He’s the rooster we nursed back to health, and he’s very pretty, too. He’s a Silver-Spangled Hamburg. The only problem is, he’s NOT a dominant rooster, so he gets chased out of the yard quite a bit. He’s really quite pathetic, so it’s a good thing he’s handsome. Although, I’ve never actually seen him doing his ‘rooster job,’ if you know what I mean.



And here is Smoky, our barn cat, who never goes anywhere near the barn. She lies on the back porch waiting for someone to feed her, and we’ve never seen her kill a thing. She must be a city cat.

I know some of you have been asking for pictures of the kids, but you get chickens instead. The chickens weren’t fighting, just walking around looking cute, so they won out today.